pour lire La disparition de Perec, en néerlandais, 2 (The purloined letter)

Edgar Allan Poe

" .. it depends upon this, replied Dupin, the Prefect and his cohort fail so frequently .. by ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They consider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. They are right in this much--that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. This always happens when it is above their own, and very usually when it is below. They have no variation of principle in their investigations ..”

(Edgar Allan Poe, uit: The purloined letter)